This specification describes technologies relating to search query suggestions and image search results.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources, for example, video files, image files, audio files, or Web pages. Such resources can include content associated with particular subjects, book articles, or news articles. A search system can select one or more resources in response to receiving a search query. A search query can be data that a user submits to a search engine, e.g., a search engine of a search system, to satisfy the user's informational needs. A search query is usually in the form of text, e.g., one or more query terms. In response to receipt of a search query, the search system selects and scores resources based on their relevance to the search query and their importance relative to other resources to provide search results that link to the selected resources. Search results are typically presented in an ordered list that is determined based on the scores.
Search systems can provide search suggestions to users to help users satisfy their informational needs. As used herein, the term “query suggestion” is a prediction of an intended search query from a user or a suggestion for a query that can be used to refine the user's search or refine the user's search strategy based, in part, on the characters entered by the user in a query input field. Some search systems provide query suggestions in the form of a list as a user is typing a query. A client device typically sends suggestion requests to a search engine with each keystroke, and the search engine provides the query suggestions with prefixes that match the entered characters. Once received, the client device displays these suggestions for user selection.
With the query suggestions, some search systems also provide predicted search results related to the query suggestions. These predicted search results can include images. However, as the query suggestions are, for example, predictions of a user's intended search query, some of the query suggestions may not accurately reflect the intended search query. Query suggestions that do not accurately predict the user's intended search query can result in predicted search results that are not likely to satisfy the user's informational needs. Further, in some scenarios, these undesired search results can potentially be objectionable to the user, e.g., graphic image search results.